by Jack Conner
Above the high-pitched, chalkboard-scraping hum she heard another sound: the striker screaming.
Fuck fuck fuck.
The screaming went on and on. Gradually, the light and noise, including the screaming, died away. When it had tapered off, Kat removed the fingers from her ears but still heard a ringing. Purple spots danced before her eyes.
“Well?” the black-mustached man demanded. “Did it work?”
The subordinate scanned a crude monitor. “Indeterminate, sir. He definitely made contact with Plane 249K-F. And his mind has altered.”
“Wonderful. Take him out and open up his frontal lobe. Then we’ll know for sure.” He pointed to the line of homunculi that stood silently along one wall. Each held a strange-looking object, a sort of metal spear, except that the tip was not sharp but looked like some bizarre light bulb ringed by metal bars. “You lot stand ready, just in case.”
The homunculi made no sign of acknowledgement.
The Minister turned back to the apparatus. “Open it,” he ordered.
More punching and tapping, and the upper half of the Elders’ machine lifted up. Purplish gas flooded outward, and sparks danced inside it. The bell-shaped top half rose, at last gliding to a stop. Dimly through the smoke, Katya thought she could see a dark figure, but she couldn’t make out any details.
“Fetch him,” the black-mustached Minister ordered.
Loqrin, instead of looking eager like the others, seemed cagey. He stepped back and nodded significantly to the scarred man, who returned the nod. The goons also stepped back, raising their weapons.
Kat held her breath.
The Guildsmen moved forward, cautiously. The Minister stood back, jaw set, eyes hard.
The purple gas flooded out, then began to thin. The dark shape started to take form. Backs hunched in unconscious defense, the Guildsmen reached the short ramp leading up to the cavity of the apparatus. The dark shape moved.
It flowed outward. It did not step, it did not spring. It flowed. Even as it moved, it seemed to enlarge, and Kat saw a strange, unnatural outline, an outline that moved and changed with every moment—like water, she thought, though it was anything but.
Gelatinous and horrible, the shape flowed toward the Guildsmen. At the last second, they dove away. Too late. A cord-like appendage whipped out from the thing and penetrated the head of one of the Guildsmen. Instantly he jerked, twitched. Saliva ran down from one corner of his mouth. His eyes popped.
The cord withdrew. Skull steaming, the man slumped to the ground.
The thing rolled forward, hovering above the floor, and more cords whipped out, striking into more Guildsmen skulls. Screams echoed off the weird black walls.
It was chaos then, purple smoke drifting everywhere, the thing flowing here and there, appearing and then vanishing through the walls of smoke. The black-mustached Minister fled behind his line of homunculi, and the surviving Guildsmen tried to follow. Loqrin’s goons fired their guns. Kat jumped at the noise.
Loqrin, however, stood firm. When the thing materialized out of a roil of smoke right before him, he made a strange sign in the air, and the being moved off. Kat stared, speechless. Her own legs shook, and a deep, dark, cold terror awoke somewhere in her guts and at the base of her spine. She felt like a rat might have felt in primal times, huddling beneath the ground as some massive saurian thing rocked the earth above it. Helpless and tiny and, as Jack would say, over her head.
The black-mustached Minister barked an order to the homunculi, and they sprang forward. The tips of their black spears burst into life, crackling and distorting the air around them. When the haunt, for that it most surely was, flowed toward the shrinking Guildsmen, the homunculi thrust their electric lances at it. The tips exploded, and the haunt shrank away. A high-pitched, inhuman scream made Kat gasp.
The haunt apparently decided it was time to go.
It flowed up out of the room, toward the exit. Toward Kat.
She stumbled back. Gunshots rang out, as Loqrin’s goons continued to fire at the creature, but if they made any impact it gave no sign. Kat turned and started to run, the gunshots covering her footfalls.
From the coldness behind her and the prickling on the nape of her neck, she felt the haunt draw closer, closer. It was going to feed on her brain!
Oh shit oh shit oh shit oh—
At last it was on her.
She wheeled. Threw herself to the floor. Stared up at the being as it descended on her. She saw its strange, gelatinous mass, oddly-shaped wings extended, more like the wings of a manta ray, she thought, than a bat, really, cords rippling around it like the tentacles of a jellyfish. As it moved closer to her, she saw something at its core, like a bright blue fire, revealed now as if shadows parted from its depths, and inside that blue fire was the striker, the man the Guildsmen had imprisoned within the apparatus, the man they had used as a guinea pig. He did not seem alive, or in any way aware. He hung slackly, eyes open but flat and dull, mouth agape, suspended like a puppet with its strings cut in the midst of the blue flame, which did not seem to consume him. Then the shadows changed, concealed the man and his enveloping flame once more, and the haunt fell on her.
Her mind spun, frantic. Almost without thinking she raised her hands and made the sign Loqrin had. Before her face, she traced a sort of spiral with the index finger of her left hand. With her right hand, she made a fist and placed it over her heart.
She felt coldness wash over her, and the shape eclipsed her sight. The haunt was gone.
Gasping, shivering, she turned around, but the thing was nowhere to be seen.
Chapter 7
Inside the chamber of the apparatus, the Guildsmen arranged their dead—four fallen, all with steaming skulls. They seemed more concerned by their equipment, however, which was in disarray. Loqrin and the Minister exchanged heated words in a corner while the others cleaned up. Katya, still shaking, listened in:
“It’s taking too damned long!” Loqrin said. “Delay after delay!”
“Why, that’s nonsense,” said the black-mustached Minister.
“Is it, Tully? This is the second time in as many attempts that we’ve produced a haunt. Tell me, is that your goal? Is that what I’ve spent so much effort facilitating?”
Minister Tully, if that was his name, looked both angry and abashed. His face was red and sweaty. “You know good and well that’s not true. Two nights ago we achieved a good measure of success—eliminated three frequencies—”
“And on the fourth—” Loqrin drew a line across his throat, by which Katya took to mean a haunt had been produced. “Three out of four. Are those really acceptable odds to you?”
Tully glared. “A few losses are acceptable ...”
Loqrin started to say something, but held himself back. Katya knew why, even if Tully didn’t. Loqrin wanted to produce haunts. That much was obvious. She didn’t know why, she didn’t know how, but clearly Loqrin and the haunts were in league, involved in some unholy bargain—yet Minister Tully and the other Guildsmen had no idea. Katya had half a mind to stand up and tell them, but, like Loqrin, she held herself back.
The Guildsmen doctored their equipment for a time, then debated on whether or not to continue the experiments.
“If only we knew why the equipment was acting faulty,” one of the subordinates said. “According to our readings, it should have translated successfully.”
“Then I’m paying you too much!” Tully snapped. He shook his head, agitated. “Well, we’re not quitting now. We’ve got too much invested, and too much at stake. Do you realize what it could mean if we’re successful?”
The subordinate nodded eagerly, but looked fearful. “Of course, sir. Great things. Marvelous things. But ... dangerous.”
Tully shoved his face close to the other’s, and the subordinate swallowed and glanced away. “Ready the equipment for another try, damn you. We still have five more test subjects to go through.”
At this, the five prisoners, still hooded, screame
d and cursed and wept, and Loqrin’s goons beat them until they subsided. Katya closed her eyes and counted to ten, then opened them.
The next two hours passed slowly and horribly. Once the equipment was readied to the Guildsmen’s satisfaction, they chained one more bloody factory worker up inside the apparatus, closed it, fired it up, then opened it up again, this time sending in the homunculi first. The homuncs came back out dragging a limp body with a steaming head, and the Guildsmen excitedly gathered around it like a pack of hungry vultures. Katya watched in disgust as they, with scientific patience and precision, hoisted the man on a steel lab table and sawed open his skull. Gouts of steam issued forth. Careful of the heat, they studied various portions of the brain, cutting some pieces away for study later, making notes on clipboards all the while. From time to time they would take out strange-looking cameras that looked overly bulky to Katya and flashed pictures; the bulbs flashed various colors, from red to green to purple and more. Not white.
Then they moved on to the next poor, doomed factory worker, and the next, until at last all were dead and their skulls cut open. Katya couldn’t watch the dissections after the first one, and she felt nauseous and weak throughout the whole ordeal. She just wanted to jump up and scream at the alchemists, to grab up one of their scalpels or bone saws and hack away at them. Instead she wept quietly in the corner, shaking and holding herself. One day, she thought. One day they’ll get theirs, the fuckers. I’ll make sure of it.
The worst thing about it all was how calmly the alchemists went about their grisly business. Not for one second did they evince the slightest concern for any of their test subjects, not once did they offer them any words of comfort or even a glass of water. The least they could’ve done was tranquilize the poor bastards, Kat thought. Whatever happened in the translation chamber—a phrase she overheard the Guildsmen using—was evidently very painful. Every time it was fired up, the victim screamed and screamed, until they could scream no more.
There were no more haunt visitations, or creations, and the Guildsmen were plainly quite relieved at this. Loqrin paced back and forth, silent for the most part, holding his own counsel. What was his game? Whatever it was, Katya vowed that she would find it out and shove it up his ass.
At last the moment came when the Guildsmen completed their experiments and prepared to leave. They were tired and sweaty from stress, but they were clearly enthusiastic about their results. They talked heatedly among themselves as they walked toward the chamber’s exit, and Katya wished she had time to eavesdrop—not that she could understand their techno-babble anyway. In any case, she ran ahead of them, back down the hallways and ramps, retracing her steps, once getting lost—she nearly died of fright when that happened—until at last she left the building of the Elders behind and returned to the zeppelin. Climbing up that rope was much more difficult than shimmying down it, but she managed it. The old aches in her hands, arms and back started to flare again, but they’d had a few hours to relax and were more manageable. She hid herself behind the propeller as Loqrin and his goons entered the gondola, then crawled upwards. She had gone to the narrow tail end, and it was easy to scamper up to the top. This way she would be better concealed and also able to rest a little.
One of the goons untied the rope wrapped around the tail assembly and joined his master in the gondola. The ropes connecting the gondola were reeled up.
Below, the alchemists spoke passionately to each other as they filed toward the passageway Kat had seen earlier and vanished down it, homunculi surrounding them, guarding them—from what?
Whatever, as Heather would say. The important thing was that they hadn’t even glanced Katya’s way. She was safe. Idly she supposed that there must be easy access to the surface from the direction they were going, and that they had swift and comfortable vehicular travel waiting for them.
The zeppelin’s propellers roared to life, and the zeppelin was off. Relief washed through her as she saw the strange building of the Elders, with its horrible translation chamber, diminish—slowly, too slowly—into the shadows.
After some time, the zeppelin ascended the vertical shaft and Kat had to blink her eyes against the sudden brightness of stars and moons above. It was a welcome pain, though, and she savored the sight of the night sky as the airship passed above the lip of the Sink and rose over the sleeping tenements below. She nearly let herself drowse, but the constant whipping of the wind wouldn’t let her.
Time to leave. Time to leave Loqrin, and the Hollows. She had learned just about everything she could. She still didn’t know what it was about, not exactly, but she thought she knew enough. She would tell Ravic to send some of his men into the Below and wait till the next time Loqrin went down there. Ravic could take him by surprise, then get the rest of the answers out of the mad bastard the hard way. Katya would gladly pitch in.
Her gaze drifted to the west and, after some searching, picked out the broad buildings of the Fifth Ward. Home. It seemed very far away. Somewhere over there Ravic was waiting for her.
Ravic ...
He’s just a father figure. Gods, girl. Give it up.
The zeppelin docked with the Arch, and the impact nearly knocked Kat off. In any case, she was jarred back to herself. She heard the noises of Loqrin and company exiting the gondola below. When they seemed safely away, she descended the face of the blimp, clawing her way down with her jagged rings like a cat descending from a tree, but slowly, very slowly.
When she was most of the way down, her eyes picked out a tiny flame in the docking bay—a cigarette! Her heart nearly stopped. She couldn’t see the smoker’s details, not exactly, it was too dark, but by his tall frame and noble profile she knew it could be no one but Loqrin. He must have lingered to have a smoke and watch the zeppelin drift off.
Her sliding, scrabbling movement seemed to have drawn his attention. His shadow-cloaked head snapped up toward her. His shoulders tensed. The cigarette paused halfway to his lips.
“Fuck,” she said.
Suddenly, the pilot of the zeppelin fired up the engines. The shudder jolted Kat out of her paralysis.
Frantic, she slid down the rest of the way. Nearly missed the docking bay altogether. She leapt. Landed on her belly. Struck her chin, bit her tongue. Cursing and spitting blood, she shot to her feet. Not a moment too soon. Gunfire erupted. A bullet punched through the ceiling of the docking bay right where she had lain.
With a yelp, she jumped forward, over the bullet hole
Another crash cut the night. Another. Bullets whined about her head.
“Fuckfuckfuckfuck.”
She threw herself off the docking bay and onto the ceiling of the Arch. The roof here was thicker; she doubted a bullet could pass through it. Still, no reason to linger. Sweat beaded her brow, stuck her blouse to the small of her back. Her legs shook.
What could she do? Loqrin probably hadn’t been able to tell who she was, just as she hadn’t been able to tell who he was, not really. He would have just seen a woman-shaped shadow sliding down the zeppelin. That meant that all he had to do was return to the harem and find which girl was missing.
She had to beat him to it.
Picking herself up, she found the sheet-rope where she’d left it, stuck between two of the decorative mounds, and ran as fast as she could back to the roof over the harem. The wind blasted her and the mounds slipped under her feet. She fell twice, but she popped right back up. Her heart smashed against her ribs like a bulldog trying to break its chain.
Quickly, she placed her shoe-anchor—it looked like it would only last one more time—and lowered herself to the harem balcony.
Her fingers trembled so badly she could barely open the sliding glass door, but somehow she managed it, slamming it shut behind her. Inside the Dolls’ Club the inmates lounged drunkenly, pretty much in the same places she’d left them. Heather, long black cigarette in her lips, walked around emptying ash trays into a trashcan she carried in one hand. Vaguely phosphorescent smoke drifted up from her c
igarette.
Her eyes lit up when she saw Kat. She dropped the trashcan and started to run over. Frantically Kat shook her head, warning her off.
“No time—” she started to say.
The heavy vault door made a ticking sound, indicating the wheel on the other side had just begun to spin.
Heather gasped.
Hells, Katya thought. Her clothes were in disarray and stained with the grime that coated the zeppelin. In one quick motion, she tore off her blouse, stepped out of her skirt, and flung them both in the corner.
Before they even landed, the door flew open, and Loqrin stood in the doorway.
Heather took a step back. Some of the dolls stirred, shrank back, or even cried out. One fled from the room, weeping. Katya did the only thing she could think of. She gyrated her hips and shook her arms over her head and said, “And that’s how you do the Bolustin.” Panting and standing in her mismatched underwear, she turned to Loqrin and smiled, perhaps too widely. “Hi,” she said.
He narrowed his eyes. She cursed herself. Dancing had been the only thing she could think of that would explain her sweat and position. She was all too aware of her skinned cheek, but she hoped the strike Loqrin had dealt her earlier would explain that.
He glared at her, then swept the rest of the room. Heather stood staring at him, a deer caught in the headlights. She looked even more frightened than Katya felt. Perhaps too much. Loqrin seemed to focus on her.
“What’s going on here?” he said.
Heather opened her mouth but no words came out.
Loqrin glanced to the balcony. “Ah-ha!” In four strides, he had torn the balcony door open and was outside, jerking at something.
Shit. Katya hadn’t had time to discard the sheet-rope. Now Loqrin yanked it down and returned inside, holding it up triumphantly.
“What’s this?” He shook it in Kat’s face because she was closest, and she made a show of swallowing and widening her eyes.